The Night that MJ Died

Two weeks before Michael Jackson died I purchased my first vinyl record: Thriller. It was the twenty-fifth anniversary edition, with covers from current artists as well as the remastered originals. Upon purchasing the album, I slit the cellophane wrapper, placed the disk on my turntable, and listened to Billie Jean. One would assume that the title song would be the obvious choice, but I wasn’t in the mood for the Vincent Price voice-over in the middle of this particular June day. After Billie Jean, I promptly removed the record from the player, placed it back in the sleeve, and filed it away on a shelf. 

Vinyl has a romantic touch to it. Especially the old records, with pops and static as the needle traces the groove on the way to the first note. I had listened to the voices of my peers, to coworkers, to customers (at that time I had been employed at a local music store). They told me that vinyl was king. After hearing the full-body sound of Billie Jean play from my newly-acquired system, I had to agree.

Michael Jackson was as good an artist as any to start off my record collection. The King of Pop had credibility, staying power, funk. The album sounded upbeat, while being utterly dark. It was a classic. But aside from these facts, I never really had a profound connection to Michael Jackson, or his music.

Two weeks later, on a Thursday afternoon, I was informed by a regular at the store that the King of Pop was no more. It had already been a bad week for famous people. Ed McMahon had died earlier in the week, and that same day Farrah Fawcett succumbed to her battle with cancer. When I heard the news, I took to the internet. Within moments the news was confirmed, and I knew what would happen next.

            Over a year earlier, when Heath Ledger passed away, people had reacted in a way I hadn’t expected. To console themselves, or to commemorate his life, crowds entered into the store to purchase memorabilia. Posters, books, old movies. Anything that had his face or name. I knew that with Michael Jackson, the public mourning would be multiplied. I was right.

            Within the hour the store had flooded with new customers. We sold out of records, CDs, music videos and other DVDs, posters, trading cards, books, and bobble heads. I printed his name, followed by birth and death dates on a piece of paper that I taped to his name card in the CD section. It sat like a tombstone without any CDs left in front of it.

            The death of any individual is a tragic thing. But the death of a pop star is an entirely different animal. People remember where they were, what they were doing, who they were with, when these things happen. I was working as the only manager at a record store with only one other employee on what would have been our slowest night of the week. I had just shut down the secondary register for the night. I had asked the employee working with me to start vacuuming the store. And then, I was helping seven customers at once, I was fielding phone calls about what Michael Jackson merchandise we had in stock, I was talking with New 9, WMUR.

            In the following days, our warehouse’s supply of MJ products was depleted. The same vinyl I had purchased two weeks prior was listed on EBay for three times what I paid for it. The death of a pop star is a peculiar event. It is the one thing that is tragic enough to make us mourn with our wallets.